Dispelling nutrition myths, ranting, and occasionally, raving

Can you increase IQ through diet?

Recent research out of Australia has found that childhood IQ is linked to dietary patterns according to an article in Science Daily. The study looked at the eating habits of a group of children at6 months, 15 months, and two years of age and then looked at their IQs at 8 years of age. Apparently the children who consumed healthier diets had higher IQs than the children who consumed more “junk” food. While I think this is great, of course it’s good to see that there are positive benefits to eating a healthy diet, I was also a little curious about how they controlled for other factors which may have contributed to IQ levels. I read the full article and was pleased to see that they controlled for things such as maternal education and socioeconomic factors. The one thing that I had expected them to control for was parental IQ. Surprisingly, to me, they didn’t. Now, it’s been a long time since my psych degree but I’m pretty sure that the strongest predictor of IQ is parental, especially maternal, IQ. Why wouldn’t the researchers have controlled for this factor? I hate to disparage a study that is showing benefits to healthy eating but I also think that it’s important to be objective. Please, continue to feed your children a healthy diet.

Besides the fact that the researchers failed to control for the most important contributing factor to IQ, I don’t really think that IQ is all that meaningful a measurement of intelligence, nor is it a predictor of success. A high IQ doesn’t mean that you’re smarter than other people it just means that you’re better at the type of test they’re administering. It’s kind of like a mental BMI. Most people know that it’s not a great measure but we don’t really have anything better.